Demolition

We have watched a house down the street go through different stages of preparation for demolition. We saw them gut part of it, firefighters set it on fire & rip the roof apart for practice, different rescue dogs practice their craft, and even a company set up a decontamination unit around the house to run different scenarios . It was interesting to watch everyone practice their valuable skills. I loved that they used the house for something good before tearing it down. Everyone is thankful the city fought to remove this unpleasant and unusable house from our neighborhood. The site is now green area.

I took the kids down to watch the city tear it down. We sat across the street and an official asked us if we planned on getting closer because it wouldn't be a good idea. REALLY? We were about 6 plus ft behind the yellow rope. No sir, I am going to let the kids crawl under the rope to investigate the process closer. That answer stayed inside my head but not my daughter's. She said," No sir. Why would we plan on disobeying the police officer (he told all the onlookers to move back about 3ft from the rope) to get closer to the dangerous conditions and possible endanger ourselves or the workers?"  He just looked at her and said, "Oh, good point." and drove off. I was embarrassed that she spoke rudely to the official. That is not like her. Her reason was she didn't like to be spoken down to like she was an idiot. I was talking to my daughter, oh heck I should just call it what it was, I was lecturing (evil parenting nowadays) her about treating others how we would like to be treated when a construction worker came over to high five her for finally getting rid of the official. Apparently he was trying to tell them how to do their jobs. They think he just picked us as an easy target to boss around. I later told my kids that is still not a reason to be rude and he probably was just trying to make sure we were safe but didn't know how to say it.

I had an 12 yr old boy, 8 yr old girl, an almost 4 yr old boy, and a 1 year old girl with me. Who do you think enjoyed it the most? Yup, the 1 year old girl. She cheered each time something big came down. The other kids found it insteading but nothing like she did. They all thought it was neat that the crew was spraying water on the wood while the equipment tore down the wall. They jumped with fear when a guy almost lost his head when a huge side wall flip towards him instead of the way it was suppose to fall. We even walked down the next day to watch the removal of all the remains. I asked the kids to share what their favorite part of the house removal week with each other. Here is what they said. They liked watching big equipment destroy everything, watching the firefighters hack the roof with axes, and the guy almost losing his head. Nice kids.

 Down the street, about 3 houses away when we took this photo.

 On the corner, about 2 houses away.

Across the street, in the lawn of a neighbor's house.